Author: Belon, Pierre
Title: L'Histoire de la Nature des Oyseaux, avec Leuers Descriptions, & Naifs Portraicts Retirez du Naturel, seven Parts complete, bound in one volume
Description: Paris: Guillaume Cavellat, 1555. First edition. Pp. (28), 381, (1, colophon); general title and six divisional titles each with a large woodcut device, 161 woodcuts in the text, including a portrait of the author, 2 skeletons, and 158 large cuts of birds. Eighteenth-century brown one-quarter calf leather over sprinkled paper-covered boards (the boards are likely the original due to a faint imprint of another cover beneath the sprinkled paper and due to fact that the book is sewn on alum-tawed thongs laced into the boards), tall 4to (13 x 9 inches). Belon's L'Histoire is ""one of the earliest books dealing entirely with birds"" (Ayer, Zimmer, p. 52). The present volume was intended as a compendium of ornithology and contains (the author's) important comparison of human and avian skeletons, which became the foundation of the science of comparative anatomy (see comments in Ronsil, no. 189). This work is a handsome example of the Cavellat issue of this important Renaissance work of science -- one of earliest printed ornithological books (See Nissen IVB 86; Norman 180; Mortimer French 50). Small bookplate on the front free endpaper, old name in ink crossed in the upper outer corner of the title page, no other ownership marks. Two pages have small marginal tears to paper with no effect to the text, the front attached endpaper has two old creases from the board that extend into the first section of the text, all of the text-pages and woodcuts are very bright and clean; a tight and clean copy in near fine condition..

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